Page 197 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 19 - CONSUMER INTERESTS - THE 1990’S A PERIOD OF MASSIVE CHANGE
Chapter 19 - Consumer Interests - The 1990’s a period of massive change
I’ve always been passionate and committed to success in everything I have done but to be successful you have to believe in the cause, in the merit of what you are doing and never give
up. For me this is also meant that you should never just accept the status quo.
So this brings me to two closely interlinked subjects to which I dedicated huge part of my later career and in which I have great pride. These are the insurance industry reputation or image and the protection of consumer interests
In my early days I think it fair to say that the industry did not necessarily see these two issues as closely aligned
At ICA, both during my period as President and later as CEO, we did a huge amount of work and led ground-breaking change in the industry in the 1990’s with the formation of the General Insurance Claims Review Panel in 1991 and the first ever Insurance Industry Code of Practice in 1995. These led onto an extensive insurance industry image campaign and a massive training program to which every company sent its staff. The costs were huge in 1990’s dollars but the industry CEOs saw the need and supported it.
As an interesting twist, when the Claims Review Panel was first launched in 1991 it was not compulsory for insurers to be members. We did not have legislation to compel participation in those days in either the Code or the Claims Review Panel. So, we made membership of the Claims Review Panel part of the Code and then we made participation in the Code a condition of membership of ICA. This did present some difficulties especially for Lloyd’s, with its
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